Cons

Bottom Line

The Google Pixel 3 is the best small Android phone you can buy with the latest specs, impressive camera capabilities, and genuinely innovative AI features.

15 Oct 2018Ajay Kumar

Lovers of small Android phones rejoice, Google has answered your prayers with the Pixel 3. For the first time in years, you no longer have to make the choice between comfort and performance. The Pixel 3 (£739 for 64GB or £839 for 128GB) has the same top-of-line specs and features as its larger sibling, the Pixel 3 XL, including excellent camera performance and some very cool new functionality like call screening and automated travel booking (once Google Duplex is released). If you want a pure, AI-driven Google experience in a one-handed form factor, the Pixel 3 is the phone to buy and our Editors' Choice.

Design and Features

Google is going for a more modern look for the Pixel 3. The entire back is glass, but most of it uses a proprietary matte finish while the top is left glossy. The front is protected by a pane of Gorilla Glass 5. Colour options include black, white, and a very light pink that Google calls "Not Pink." The bezels have been slimmed down from the Pixel 2 and the phone now has a current 18:9 aspect ratio, maximising screen real estate relative to its size. That said, there's still some notable bezel on the top and bottom to accommodate the front-firing stereo speakers.

The phone measures 5.7 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.2 ounces, making it significantly lighter than the Apple iPhone XS (5.7 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches, 6.2 ounces) and just a little shorter than the Samsung Galaxy S9 (5.8 by 2.7 by 0.3 inches, 5.8 ounces). The real selling point over its larger sibling (which measures 6.2 by 3.0 by 0.3 inches and weighs 6.5 ounces) is just how manageable it feels in your hand. I found it easy to reach across the screen and to the top to interact with notifications and other elements. It's one of the most comfortable phones to use with one hand.

Despite being covered in glass and having a smooth coating along its aluminium sides, the Pixel 3 doesn't feel slippery thanks to its soft-touch finish. The white model we tested didn't pick up fingerprints or scratches while we used it, but you can always throw on a case if you're worried. Google's distinctive fabric cases (not included) are a particularly nice option.

As far as buttons and ports go, there are no surprises here. There's a USB-C port on the bottom for charging next to a SIM card slot. There's no expandable storage, which has always been the case for Google's Pixel/Nexus line. The fingerprint sensor on the back is within easy reach. And you won't find a 3.5mm headphone jack, but you do get a USB-C dongle along with a pair of wired USB-C Pixel Buds.

Left to right: Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3

A somewhat stiff power button and volume rocker are on the right side. The former is brightly coloured (lime green in the case of the white Pixel 3), making it stand out from the rest of the phone. Double pressing it allows you to quickly launch the camera. The standard software buttons are gone, replaced with gesture navigation. Swiping up on the home screen and continuing to swipe brings up the app drawer; swiping up once enters multitasking and swiping to the left or right lets you scroll open apps; swiping right on the home button and quickly releasing lets you switch to the previous app. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but I quickly grew to enjoy it.

Like on the Pixel 2, here you have Google's Active Edge, which incorporates a squeeze sensor on the sides of the phone to quickly launch Google Assistant. It's responsive and doesn't trigger accidentally once you calibrate the squeeze sensitivity, and there's satisfying haptic feedback when it activates. It's not reprogrammable to launch a different app, but you can also squeeze to silence timers, alarms, notifications, and incoming calls.

Like other flagship phones, the Pixel 3 is IP68 waterproof, allowing it to survive in over five feet of water for 30 minutes. It stood up to a thorough dunking and rinsing-off in the kitchen sink without issue.

Display and Pixel Stand

The Pixel 3 has a 5.5-inch 2,160-by-1,080 OLED display that's thankfully free from the scourge of a notch. The resolution works out to a crisp 443 pixels per inch. While we've been seeing higher-resolution screens lately (like the 570ppi Galaxy S9), the Pixel 3 is still plenty sharp for the size. It's crisp enough to easily read text, watch videos, and play games, and you won't notice any real difference in clarity between the two devices. The one thing to note is that, while the screen is certified to support HDR content, it doesn't do any upscaling as we've seen on phones like the Sony Xperia XZ3 and the midrange Nokia 7.1

Likely taking heed of complaints from last year, Google has given the Pixel 3 several screen colour modes from the more colour accurate Natural to a richer, more saturated Boosted. By default, it's on Adaptive, which I find offers the best of both worlds. Viewing angles are great and brightness is high enough to easily see the screen outdoors and even under direct sunlight, barring some reflectivity.

Like last year's Pixels, the Pixel 3 has an OLED panel that gives it dense, inky blacks and makes it handy for the always-on screen to show the time, date, and notifications without sucking up too much power. If you place the phone on a Pixel Stand (a £79 10W wireless charger), the Pixel 3 transforms into a smart display, like the Google Home Hub. With the installation of a separate app, it can be enabled to display news headlines, calendar appointments, and cycle through albums in your photo gallery. It becomes particularly useful when you set up morning or bedtime routines, in which Google Assistant will launch into a briefing and give you updates on traffic conditions and weather. It can also interact with the Nest Hello to automatically show you video footage when someone rings your door.

Calls and Audio

Voice calls are excellent, with clear transmissions through the earpiece and solid noise cancellation for outgoing calls. Voices came across naturally in testing, without the robotic edge we often hear when noise cancellation kicks in. The only background noise that bled through was from the sound of loud construction.

One of the most interesting new features on the Pixel 3 is call screening. When you receive calls from unknown numbers, Google gives you the option to have the call screened. On the caller's end, this results in an explanation of what's happening and a request for you to explain the purpose of your call. The receiver then gets the explanation as text on their hand. The voice transcription for this is quick and accurate, I can see this service being very useful to filter out robocalls and spam.

Once Google Duplex is rolled out, the phone will be able to do even more in the call department. Google Assistant can take over calling duties for you, sparing you from the tedium of tasks like scheduling hair appointments and making dinner reservations.

As far as additional audio goes, the front-firing stereo speakers may not be room-filling at maximum volume, but they were more than sufficient to attract the attention of my colleagues when blasting Iron Maiden. The Pixel 3 supports 24-bit audio with the included Pixel Buds. The Pixel Buds are comfortable to wear, come with an adjustable ear loop, and integrate with Google Assistant. I found audio quality to be robust, with a crisp and accurate range, though the LG G7 with its dedicated quad DAC still provides more customisation for audiophiles.

Processor and Battery

Performance is everything you'd expect from a flagship phone in late 2018. Like its larger sibling, the Pixel 3 is powered by a top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, with 4GB of RAM. That isn't as much as some other new phones that come with 6GB or 8GB of RAM, but it's still ample for multitasking and high-end gaming.

In the PCMark Work 2.0 test, which measures general performance in a variety of tasks like web browsing, and video and photo editing, the Pixel 3 scored 9,358, higher than any other phone we've tested. The Pixel 3 also had some of the fastest responsiveness I've experienced when it comes to launching apps and scrolling web pages. Demanding games like Asphalt 8 and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds were smooth as butter, with scarcely any frame drops.

Battery life is solid. The phone clocked 7 hours and 57 minutes in our test, in which we set screen brightness to maximum and stream full-screen video over Wi-Fi. That's on par with the Pixel 3 XL (8 hours and 10 minutes), though neither can match the Galaxy Note 9, which outlasted our 12-hour battery test with juice to spare. The included 18W adapter lets you fast charge the phone and supports USB-PD 2.0. You can also use wireless fast charging with the Pixel Stand, and the phone will also work with other Qi-certified wireless chargers.

Camera

Camera performance is where the Pixel 3 really stands out. It "only" has a single 12.2MP dual-pixel camera with optical image stabilisation, foregoing the double or triple rear sensors we're seeing on other leading phones. Despite this, it has one of the fastest, most responsive sensors we've tested, with excellent post-processing and low-light capabilities. We put it to the test in a shootout against the iPhone XS Max, the Galaxy Note 9, and the LG V40 ThinQ. While the Pixel 3 didn't necessarily come out on top in every setting, it took the most consistently good shots, capturing the most detail in a variety of challenging scenarios.

In the above shots, the Pixel 3 focused fast and captured highly detailed images with minimal noise and blur. When it comes to capturing objects like trees and buildings, the Pixel 3 is true-to-life, capturing details like shadows, textures, and crevices without overly smoothing them like the LG V40 or oversaturating colours like the Note 9. That said, we're really getting down to minute details here—all four phones are fantastic shooters.

Super Res Zoom kicks in automatically when you zoom in more than 1.2x. Essentially, it increases the resolution of an image higher than what you'd typically be able to achieve without a telephoto lens, without the graininess and artifacts from a pure digital zoom. To test this, we zoomed the Pixel 3 2x on a clock tower, which made for solid results you can see below.

When it comes to low-light shooting, the Pixel 3 again holds its own. In the dim setting of PC Labs, the phone consistently focused with reliable clarity and minimal noise. Unlike LG's Super Bright Camera, the Pixel 3 doesn't use pixel binning to combine pixels, preserving details rather than brightening the shot as a whole. To me, it's a worthwhile trade-off, though shots on the V40 may look clearer to some eyes.

The front set of cameras consist of a pair of 8MP standard and wide-angle sensors. The latter can snap with a 97-degree field of view, giving you a wider sense of your surroundings when taking a selfie. The sensors are sharp and accurate when it comes to colour reproduction and skin tones. Most interestingly, while it appears to have barrel distortion in the viewfinder, with post-processing the effect is removed, minimising the distinctive fish-eye effect we normally see on wide-angle cameras.

Like just about every other phone on the market these days, the Pixel 3 can take bokeh shots, blurring out the background and putting a foreground object into focus. It's able to do this for both the front and back camera. With either set of sensors, the result is a crisp shot, with a generally excellent application of the blur effect.

Also deserving of mention is Playmoji, Google's branded AR stickers. Not only do they appear realistic, but they also have the ability to respond to the environment. For instance, if you add Iron Man into a scene, he'll know when you're taking a selfie and point and wave as you snap the shot. As time goes on, the Pixel 3 will use machine learning to suggest things you can add to your AR scenes.

The Pixel 3's rear camera is capable of recording 4K video at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps. In both cases, video is smooth and stable, buoyed by a mix of optical and electronic image stabilisation. We found video to be smooth, with minimal jittering or frame drops.

Software and AI

The Pixel ships with Android 9.0 Pie, the very latest version of Google's mobile operating system. The phone is free from bloatware, and comes with the guarantee of two years of updates at the very least. We've already covered many of the changes Pie brings, including the redesigned gesture navigation, integration with the Pixel Stand, improved Google Assistant, and features like call screening and the upcoming Google Duplex.

One thing we haven't mentioned is Digital Wellbeing. It's a new panel in the Settings menu that shows your device usage, what apps you've accessed, and gives you options to restrict your phone's hold over your life by letting you set a wind-down period before bedtime, limiting interruptions and greying out the screen to discourage use. Over time the phone uses machine learning to understand what apps you use and prioritise them over others when it comes to memory and power.

Since this is a pure Android phone it only comes loaded with Google apps. Our 64GB model had 51.11GB available for use. That's plenty of space for apps and photos, especially since you get unlimited Google Photos cloud storage for life.

Conclusions

The Google Pixel 3 has fast performance, excellent camera capabilities, and useful AI functionality that goes beyond what we're seeing in other Android flagships. It's $100 less than the larger Pixel 3 XL, doesn't have the distracting screen notch, and shares nearly all the same hardware and software features. It's also one of the most comfortable Android phones to hold in one hand that we've seen in some time. All of this earns the Pixel 3 our Editors' Choice as not only the best "small" Android phone you can buy, but simply one of the best Android phones, period.

Google Pixel 3

excellent

Bottom Line: The Google Pixel 3 is the best small Android phone you can buy with the latest specs, impressive camera capabilities, and genuinely innovative AI features.

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About the Author

Ajay Kumar is PCMag's Analyst obsessed with all things mobile. Ajay reviews phones, tablets, accessories, and just about any other gadget that can be carried around with you. In his spare time he games on the rig he built himself, collects Nintendo amiibos, and tries his hand at publishing a novel. Follow Ajay on Twitter @Ajay_H_Kumar. See Full Bio